Luna Innovations is an American developer and manufacturer of fiber-optics- and terahertz-based technology products for the aerospace, automotive, communications, defense, energy, infrastructure, security, and silicon photonics industries. It is headquartered in

Roanoke, Virginia Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is lo ...

. Luna's products are used to test, measure, analyze, monitor, protect and improve products and processes to enhance the safety, security, and connectivity of people. Luna Innovations holds more than 450 U.S. and international patents in

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

and specializes in products for fiber-optic testing of components, modules and networks, as well as

integrated optics A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components which form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated c ...

and distributed

fiber-optic sensor A fiber-optic sensor is a sensor that uses optical fiber either as the sensing element ("intrinsic sensors"), or as a means of relaying signals from a remote sensor to the electronics that process the signals ("extrinsic sensors"). Fibers have m ...

solutions. Their fiber-optic test and measurement devices include optical analyzers, reflectometers, tunable lasers, optical switches and customized systems for strain, temperature, shape and position sensing. Luna Labs works with government agencies on technology development in these four core areas:

sensor A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...

s and systems (

and

ultrasonics Ultrasound is sound waves with frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hear it. This limit varies fr ...

); health sciences; and advanced materials including corrosion inhibitors, self-cleaning and self-healing

coating A coating is a covering that is applied to the surface of an object, usually referred to as the Substrate (materials science), substrate. The purpose of applying the coating may be decorative, functional, or both. Coatings may be applied as liquid ...

s, impact indicators,

flame retardant The term flame retardants subsumes a diverse group of chemicals that are added to manufactured materials, such as plastics and textiles, and surface finishes and coatings. Flame retardants are activated by the presence of an ignition source a ...

additives and

nanomaterial * Nanomaterials describe, in principle, materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science-based approach to nan ...

s; and

secure computing Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data. McAfee acquired the company in 2008. The company also developed filtering systems used ...

using hardware-based anti-tamper technologies. Luna Innovations was founded by an

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

professor at

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

and was originally headquartered in

Blacksburg, Virginia Blacksburg is an incorporated town in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 44,826 at the 2020 census. Blacksburg, as well as the surrounding county, is dominated economically and demographically by the presence of V ...

, and still has a manufacturing facility there. It moved its headquarters to Roanoke in September 2006. It has locations across Virginia: Blacksburg, Roanoke, and

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Cha ...

, as well as locations in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; and Santa Clara and Chino, California. In December 2020, Luna Innovations also acquired OptaSense, which had 8 locations across Europe, North America and the Middle East. Luna Innovations had an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in June 2006 with the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

trading symbol LUNA.

Acquisitions

Two companies developed from Luna Innovations have been sold to other companies. Luna Energy, which developed

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

monitoring sensors for the oil and gas industry, was acquired by oilfield services firm

Baker Hughes Baker Hughes Company, organized in Delaware and headquartered in Houston, is one of the world's largest oil field services companies. The company provides products and services for oil well drilling, formation evaluation, completion, productio ...

. Baker Hughes helped build Luna Energy in 2002 with a 40% stake in the organization. In December of 2004, Baker Hughes purchased the remaining 60%. Luna i-Monitoring, which developed a suite of integrated wireless sensors for remote monitoring for the oil and gas industry, was acquired by IHS Energy. Luna has acquired companies with adjacent and complementary technologies, including Micron Optics, General Photonics, OptaSense, and LIOS.

References

External links

Luna Innovations
Official Web site
Luna LinkedIn
Company LinkedIn site {{Authority control Companies based in Roanoke, Virginia Companies listed on the Nasdaq Virginia Tech